Training Mental Toughness for CrossFit

Mental toughness is a measure of one’s resilience and confidence in their ability to perform.

Research proves that mental toughness is a key success indicator for sport, work, and life.

The only way to train mental toughness is to put yourself in situations where you are pushed to your limits. Fortunately, CrossFit is a perfect arena for becoming mentally tough.

Being mentally tough is also the result of confidence, which can be developed through having clarity and regular practice.

Resilience and grit, both factors in determining mental toughness, shed light on how far we can go. Without mental toughness, achieving great things is impossible.

Let’s take a look at 7 mental skills you can use in CrossFit and life to set PRs and develop more mental toughness:

1. Anxiety Management

How do you handle adversity?

Pretend it’s the middle of a workout, and you can’t hit a double under to save your life. The guy at your box you consider yourself evenly matched with cruises past you effortlessly.

How do you respond?

Do you rise to the occasion, or do you get discouraged? Do you reset your focus, or does the jump rope get thrown like a rag doll out of frustration?

Anxiety before and during competition is actually necessary for good performance. When managed, it helps activate things like adrenaline.

Managing anxiety is all about having a plan in place for when it arises. Breathing techniques like box breathing and mindfulness allow you to reset your intentions and prevent the anxiety from becoming crippling.

2. Control Your Self-Talk

Self-talk and anxiety go hand in hand, because it’s often what we say to ourselves during a workout that induces anxiety.

Negative self-talk decreases performance during WODs and may discourage an athlete from showing up at all.

You can be competitive and still control what you say to yourself. Consider having a mantra or word you use to shut off the negative dialogue when it starts to get out of control.

The key is to not judge yourself, the words, or the situation. Notice your self-talk, acknowledge it, and if it’s detrimental to performance, change it to something more desirable.

Sounds like:

“Oh you idiot, you can’t get a bar muscle up still! You are so…..”

*Catches self*

“Okay, reset. Let’s ask the coach what I might be doing wrong.”

3. Audit Your Focus.

It’s as true in sport psychology as it is in life; you are what you focus on.

To increase your performance during CrossFit workouts, take a moment to assess yourself. What do you think about before a workout? During? After?

Is your sole focus on getting the top score in that class, or is it on doing your best?

Neither are wrong if they motivate you, but knowing where your focus lies offers valuable information about how you might improve yourself in the future.

For example, if you are solely driven by competition, it makes no sense for an athlete like you to train alone.

You’re also more likely to train hard if you workout in a gym where there are better athletes than you. Otherwise, you’ll become a big fish in a little pond and eventually plateau.

On the other hand, if you’re focused on making friends or reaching a fitness goal for the sake of doing it, you’ll want an environment that focuses on community and keeping each other accountable.

4. Set The Right Goals.

Goal-setting has permeated every corner of the internet, fitness community and otherwise. You may be sick of hearing about it, but it’s still important.

If your goals aren’t aligned to what you want, or you don’t know what you want, you’re bound to get bored or quit. At the very least, you can expect to plateau.

Remember, a good goal is measurable and actionable. You should have an idea of the date you’d like to achieve your goal by.

Tip #3 and #4 go hand in hand, because your focus is a good indicator of what you should build your goals around.

This video with Jordan Peterson on setting goals is a very good place to start.

5. Use Imagery and Visualization.

Another topic that has been abused is visualization. I won’t preach to you that The Secret is the key to success.